The United States seems to be inching ever closer to intervening in the conflict in Libya despite the obvious dangers of doing so. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), and John Kerry (D-Mass.) have all called for the imposition of a no-fly zone over the troubled nation. McCain and Lieberman have even sponsored a resolution urging President Barack Obama to support such an act.

One more reason to terminate all foreign aid: The U.S. Agency for International Development — funded, of course, by American taxpayers — is providing money to at least two population control groups to engage in a program of essentially forced mass circumcisions and vasectomies in Rwanda.

According to President Barack Obama, combat in Iraq involving U.S. troops ended on August 31. Four-and-a-half months later, American soldiers are still dying in the sands of Mesopotamia. The Wall Street Journal reports that two separate January 15 attacks in Iraq left three U.S. soldiers dead.

Waste, fraud, and corruption are endemic to government projects. At least projects that take place close to home, however, can be monitored and the corruption exposed. Imagine how much worse such projects must be when carried out in foreign countries, far from the watchful eye of the taxpayers funding them.

The Obama administration plans to release a review of U.S. policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan on December 16. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on Tuesday that “the report will not contain any surprises,” according to Voice of America — which is to say that it will simply rehash the administration’s public position that Obama’s strategies are succeeding. “Gibbs,” added VOA, “says the administration is pleased with progress in several areas,” and “he has no doubt that the war effort is going better than it was a year ago.”

Governments’ dealings with paid informers are always risky. By his willingness to snitch on his friends and associates, the informer has demonstrated his untrustworthiness, so it is difficult for his handlers to know when he is telling the truth and when he is fabricating information either to settle old scores or simply to keep the largess flowing. The problem of knowing whom to trust only becomes more intractable when operating in foreign countries.

As the death toll among U.S. service members in Afghanistan continues to mount — 2010 is the deadliest year of the war thus far — President Barack Obama may regret his administration’s decision, correct though it was, to permit the media to cover the return of dead soldiers’ remains to Dover Air Force Base. Scenes such as this one reported by the Associated Press may become all too common: “Several of President Barack Obama’s top national security advisers stood on a silent, windy tarmac Wednesday night to watch as the bodies of six U.S. soldiers killed by a rogue Afghan policeman returned to U.S. soil.”

In 2008 a series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, claimed the lives of 164 people. According to the New York Times, one of the key plotters of the attacks was David C. Headley, a former drug dealer then serving as an informant in Pakistan for the U.S. government. To make matters worse, Washington had evidence that Headley was a terrorist sympathizer yet kept him on its payroll, says the Times, “even as he was learning to deal with explosives and small arms in terrorist training camps.”

When Republicans take control of the nation’s purse strings in January, one of the first things they could cut to save taxpayers money is the White House travel budget. In addition to earning the gratitude of Americans, it could also generate some goodwill among taxpayers in the countries the Obama family might otherwise visit since the citizens of those countries are forced to pay for security and put up with other inconveniences whenever the First Family shows up.

Americans do not like to think of their government as an aggressor against foreign countries. We prefer to believe that our country is always the victim of unprovoked attacks and that military actions our government takes against other countries are always in response to such unwarranted aggression. For this reason, Presidents have generally felt it necessary to provoke attacks secretly, knowing that once the country was attacked, seemingly with no cause, Americans would rally ‘round the flag and support the war the President had wanted all along.